


A Fitting Sendoff

by iamacamera



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:01:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1154641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamacamera/pseuds/iamacamera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall John and Molly seek redress for slights Sherlock inflicted by taking from each other exactly Sherlock never gave either of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fitting Sendoff

The turnout for the funeral was small, but then, of course, Sherlock had not been an easy man to befriend. Molly shuffled her feet and looked over the pale, drawn faces of the mourners. Mycroft concluded with a few solemn words on the quality of his brother’s character. They were lies, but nice lies. Looking over the tearful few gathered she couldn’t help thinking Sherlock probably found this all hilarious. 

A face at the edge of her vision caught her attention. John's eyes, like her own, were dry. They flickered to meet hers. Molly looked away almost immediately. The intensity in his gaze was too much. She wasn't the only one here furious with Sherlock, apparently. To think, she could end this for him with one word. But, she had made a promise.

The ceremony drew to a close. As others mingled and traded consolations Molly withdrew. She couldn’t stand to hear their hollow words. She didn’t want an empty pat on the shoulder. What she did want was a drink.

*

Molly was on her second beer when someone settled in at the bar beside her. It was John. His eyes were still dry, though now bloodshot, and his hand shook when he signaled for a drink.

“To Sherlock.” 

John waved the glass of whiskey at Molly and downed it in one gulp. Molly tilted her beer in acknowledgement. He set his glass down for a refill. Molly couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him. He solved that problem for her.

“I don’t know how to say goodbye to him. Do you?”

“Burn St. Bart's guidelines on proper handling of bio-hazardous materials,” she suggested, as though she was sure. “He would like that.”

They shared a smile and another drink. Molly looked at him fully for what felt like the first time. Surprisingly, the man couldn’t hold his drink – two glasses of whiskey and already the color was climbing in his cheeks.

“I tried saying it after the funeral,” he admitted in a conspiratorial half whisper, dipping dangerously into her personal space and back out again. “It did nothing for me.”

“I see.” 

She was smart enough not to ask any more. John’s mouth twisted and he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, but when he straightened up for another drink there were still no tears. He set his glass down with exaggerated care and stood, suddenly composed. 

“It was nice to see you, Molly, considering the circumstances.”

“You too.” 

Molly watched John limp away, shoulders bent with an invisible weight. She finished her beer and rose to leave too. There was something she still needed to do.

*

Sherlock’s room was dark, but not empty. There was a figure silhouetted in the pale glow of the streetlamp radiating through the curtains. Molly almost hoped it was him, the detective returned. It was a moment before he recognized John. He was looking into an open drawer of Sherlock’s undershirts. When he saw her he looked as startled as she felt.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

She was struck dumb. It dawned on him a moment after it dawned on her, when his eyes fell to the keys she was grasping so tightly the teeth bit into her palm. They had the same set, not just to the front door but to Sherlock’s bedroom door as well. 

“Shit.” John sank onto the foot of Sherlock’s bed, his face in his hands. The sheets still held the shape of a sleeping figure. Sherlock’s smell was all around them. “Did he—? Were you?”

This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. But, somehow, it was. Always the same story with Sherlock: impossible but true.

“Not really. Almost. I can't believe it.”

John choked out a laugh at her remark. She was dizzy and not just from the beer. John looked up at her, and this time she couldn’t look away. For Christ’s sake, Sherlock.

“How long had this been going on?”

“On and off for a few years,” Molly grimaced, pained to admit it. “Mostly off.”

Mostly she had been given chaste kisses that left her wounded or been allowed, occasionally, to perform quick blow-jobs that left her shaking and hungry. Mostly he wouldn't call for months, not until he wanted something, not until she was sure, this time, she was over him. Mostly, through all this, perhaps because of it, she thought that if she kept waiting patiently he would come around. How foolish she had been.

“What about this past year? Was that on, or off?”

Molly balled her hands into fists. “There were rumors but— I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“That makes two of us.” 

Maybe it was the alcohol making her reckless, or maybe the anger buzzing in her ears. The words were out before she could think them through: “We should make him pay.”

“How? He’s dead. Sherlock is dead and he is still fucking with us.”

The lie was hateful spoken aloud. It took Molly a moment to recover from hearing it. When she did she walked over and put her hands on John’s shoulders. His body was warm and firm under her touch. The doctor still smelled of booze. 

“Did he ever let you have him in his bed?”

John’s eyes widened, “No.”

“Me neither.” Molly knew her grip was too tight, but she couldn’t make herself let go. “Do you know what we should do?”

Comfort each other in the way women had always comforted men. Exact revenge in the way jilted women had always sought their retribution.

“Yes,” John replied, and dragged her down into a kiss.

The touch of his mouth was a welcome shock to her system. They fell onto his bed, hands everywhere as they stripped each other, clumsy with alcohol and urgency. She dragged John’s jumper over his head, bit at the scars on his chest, then shoved at him until he was on his back and she could get the front of his pants open and take his cock into her mouth.

John sunk his hands into her hair and groaned. He must have known the patterns her tongue traced, known the way she worked her hand along his shaft. That was the way Sherlock had liked his cock sucked. How Sherlock would revel at seeing them like this, she thought, as though he’d known all along this meeting was inevitable, as if he’d planned it, and they’d been slow to catch up. She pulled away from his cock with one last lingering suck.

“Fuck me.”

Heat shot through her and he scrambled to comply, to fuck her, a woman he hardly knew but had likely tasted a hundred times on Sherlock’s skin. He reached across to the bedside table, of course Sherlock kept condoms and lube there, amid his papers and drugs and God only knew what else. After a breathless moment of waiting John covered her body with his own, his slicked cock nudging at her cunt.

Molly fisted her hand in John’s hair and pulled, “Did he ever do this?”

“No,” John growled. “But he liked to use his teeth.”

He shuddered when she bit at the muscles of his shoulder. She cried out when he buried himself to the root and pulled out far enough to do it again. It was too fast, but she didn’t want him to stop. This was everything had wanted from Sherlock; everything he had held back from. They had always kept to cursory fumblings. Sticking to the preamble was easily written off or denied in the morning. Not so with John. John fucked her mercilessly.

The force of his thrusts made her teeth rattle. Her head bumped up against the headboard in time with his rhythm. Dimly, she could hear herself crying out. But, that was alright because John was crying out too. They were both saying the same name over and over again, here in this room with its dirty clothes and documents – unfinished freehand portraits, unfinished sketches of blueprints for geodesic domes, unfinished chemistry reports – and the memory of Sherlock everywhere.

John put his hands over hers and groaned, shuddering. He left a bite mark hard enough to bruise on her neck. She came too, mingling their sweat and scent and obliterating the outline of Sherlock in the sheets.

They fell apart, panting as if from a race. She winced as John slipped out of her body. He looked older, suddenly, heartsick. His eyes squeezed shut but flickered open when she touched his face, and it was like looking into a mirror. They had both walked the same path, and had both come to the same abrupt end, almost. She wanted so badly to tell him. It filled her chest with an ache that came dangerously close to spilling out of her eyes and nose.

“He was the worst boyfriend I ever had,” Molly admitted instead, and was glad to finally say it aloud. What awful things he had said and what awful things he brought her to feel, was still causing her to do. 

“But, you loved him anyway.”

“Yeah,” she replied, and for the first time since she saw Sherlock jump, since he had left without saying goodbye, she burst into wrenching sobs. John pulled her in close and she muffled her cries against his shoulder. She let her grief rock them both and he held on tight.

This was not what she expected to find in 221B. Then again, Sherlock never gave them what they expected. At least, in this way, it seemed a fitting send off.


End file.
